Green and Gray: New Ideologies of Nature in Urban Sustainability Policy

Abstract

In the past two decades, urban sustainability has become a new policy common sense. This article argues that contemporary urban sustainability thought and practice is coconstituted by two distinct representational forms, which we call green urban nature and gray urban nature. Green urban nature is the return of nature to the city in its most verdant form, signified by street trees, urban gardens, and the greening of postindustrial landscapes. Gray urban nature is the concept of social, technological, urban space as already inherently sustainable, signified by dense urban cores, high-speed public transit, and energy-efficient buildings. We develop Lefebvre's ideas of the realistic and transparent illusions as the constitutive ideologies of the social production of space to offer a framework for interpreting contemporary urban sustainability thinking in these terms and concretize this argument through case studies of postindustrial greening in the Ruhr Valley, Germany; municipal sustainability planning in Vancouver, Canada; and the Masdar smart city project in Abu Dhabi. We conclude by examining the implications of green and gray urban natures for the politics of urban sustainability.

过去二十年来, 城市可持续性已成为新的政策共识。本文主张, 当代的城市可持续性的思想与实践, 是由两种不同的再现形式共同组成, 我们将之称为绿色城市自然与灰色城市自然。绿色城市自然, 是城市回归最为翠绿形式的自然, 并以行道树、城市花园和后工业地景绿化为特徵。灰色城市自然, 是社会、技术与城市空间在本质上已具备可持续性之概念, 并以高密度的城市核心、快速的大众运输, 以及节能的建筑为特徵。我们发展列斐伏尔有关现实与洞悉错觉作为空间的社会生产之意识形态构成之概念, 提供以这些概念诠释当代城市可持续性思考的架构, 并通过德国鲁尔河谷的后工业地景绿化、加拿大温哥华的城市可持续性规划, 以及阿布达比的马思达尔智能城市计画之案例研究, 具体化上述主张。我们于结论中检视绿色与灰色城市自然对于城市可持续性政治的意涵。

En las dos décadas anteriores, la sustentabilidad urbana se ha convertido en una política de sentido común. En este artículo se sostiene que el pensamiento y la práctica de la sustentabilidad urbana están co-constituidos por dos formas representacional distintas, que nosotros denominados naturaleza urbana verde y naturaleza urbana gris. La naturaleza urbana verde es el regreso de la naturaleza a la ciudad, el verde de verdad, representado por los árboles de calle, los jardines urbanos y el reverdecer de los paisajes posindustriales. La naturaleza urbana gris es el espacio social, tecnológico y urbano ya inherentemente sostenible, representado por los densos núcleos urbanos, el tránsito público de alta velocidad y los edificios eficientes por su diseño energético. Desarrollamos las ideas de Lefebvre sobre las ilusiones realistas y transparentes como ideologías constituyentes de la producción social del espacio, para proporcionar un marco de interpretación al modo de pensar la sustentabilidad urbana contemporánea en estos términos y para concretar este argumento a través de los estudios de caso del reverdecimiento posindustrial en el valle del Ruhr, Alemania; la planeación de la sustentabilidad municipal en Vancouver, Canadá; y el proyecto de ciudad inteligente de Masdar, en Abu Dhabi. Concluimos con el examen de las implicaciones que tienen las naturalezas verde y gris para las políticas de sustentabilidad urbana.

Key Words:

• green and gray
• ideology
• sustainability
• urban nature

关键词：:

• 绿与灰
• 意识形态
• 可持续性
• 城市自然。

Palabras clave:

• verde y gris
• ideología
• sustentabilidad
• naturaleza urbana

Acknowledgments

We thank Roger Keil and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We also received valuable feedback from participants at the “Democratizing the Green City” conference at the University of California–Santa Cruz and a paper session at the 2017 annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers. Thanks to Neil Brenner for supervising the 2009 reading group in which this idea first germinated and especially to fellow participant Aaron Jakes for coining the phrase “green and gray.”

Additional information

Funding

The authors are grateful for financial support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (430-2016-00629), the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Société et Culture (2017-NP-197580), the American Sociological Association Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, the American Council of Learned Societies (Dissertation Completion Fellowship), and McGill University (SSH Emerging Scholar Accelerator).

Notes on contributors

David Wachsmuth

DAVID WACHSMUTH is the Canada Research Chair in Urban Governance and Assistant Professor in the School of Urban Planning, McGill University, Montreal, QC H3A 0C2, Canada. E-mail: [email protected]. His research examines urban governance problems that extend beyond the boundaries of the traditional city and thus challenge how scholars, policymakers, and the public alike understand cities as social systems.

Hillary Angelo

HILLARY ANGELO is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, University of California–Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz, CA 95064. E-mail: [email protected]. Her work explores the relationship between ideas about nature and urbanization from historical, theoretical, and ethnographic perspectives.